On January 23, Bills safety Donte Whitner asked us via Twitter to publicize his promise to give away two Super Bowl tickets once he reached 10,000 followers. Since he seemed sincere in his promise (e.g., “Giving away the 2 tixs....SUPERBOWL TIXS!!!!!! FREE!!! FREE!!! FREE!!!! FREE!!! FREE!!!!! Follow to win!”), we decided to help him out.
So, with our help, he climbed from 8,372 followers to 10,000. Then, once he made it to 10,000, he announced the rules of the contest.
To win, the follower had to guess the scores of both conference title games.
As it turns out, no one did. So now Whitner won’t be giving away the tickets.
He defended his decision with this tweet: “There’s plently of people that were ‘close’ some almost dead on. But I never said close I said guess the scores....it was fair!”
No, Donte, it wasn’t fair. You created a clear impression that someone would get the tickets once you accumulated 10,000 followers. Then, once you accumulated 10,000 followers, you created unreasonably difficult rules for winning the two tickets that you had led everyone to believe you would give away.
So now he keeps the tickets, and he has 10,000 followers. So the truly “fair” outcome would be for everyone who followed him in order to have a shot at winning the tickets to unfollow him, immediately.
And if other people who already were following him would choose to do the same, we’d be fine with that, too.
We just did.